Starwatch

Every one of us is unique and important, but at the same time, we’re a microscopic part of something that’s beyond comprehension.

Our Earth, solar system, sun and billions of other stars — along with who knows how many other planets — are all orbiting around our home Milky Way galaxy.

Miles are useless for trying to define how enormous our galaxy is. The numbers would be beyond mind-boggling! Instead, we use light-years, the distance a beam of light would travel in a year’s time. That works out to just short of 6 trillion miles. That is a “6” followed by 12 zeros!

Our Milky Way is believed to be a spiral disk of stars with a big bulge in the middle. It spans well over 100,000 light-years in diameter, but the thickness of most of the disk is very thin by comparison, around 1,0

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